Health reform is now causing job turmoil across the country in three key groups that the White House has depended on for supportlocal government, school workers and unions.

School districts in states like Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Utah, Nebraska, and Indiana are dropping to part-time status school workers such as teacher aides, administrators, secretaries, bus drivers, gym teachers, coaches and cafeteria workers. Cities or counties in states like California, Indiana, Kansas, Texas, Michigan and Iowa are dropping to part-time status government workers such as librarians, secretaries, administrators, parks and recreation officials and public works officials.

This growing trend comes as three major unions have written to Democratic Congressional leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid warning that, because health reform is helping to push the work week to below 30 hours, it will destroy the foundation of the 40-hour work week that is the backbone of the American middle class.

The federal law forces employers with at least 50 full-time workers to cover at least 60% of health-care costs for employees who work 30 hours or more per week. The law covers schools and state and local governments.

If they don't offer affordable health insurance, schools and local governments could be fined $2,000 to as much as $3,000 per employee annually. The White House delayed the employer mandate for one year so employers can adjust, which the National School Boards Association (NSBA) applauded, as the mandate will hit schools hard.

Ramirez's latest political cartoon LARGE VERSION07/30/2013:LINKLINKto regular sized version of Ramirez's latest, and an archive of his political cartoons.

FOLKS, THOSE OF YOU WHO CAN, PLEASE CLICK HERE AND PENCIL IN YOUR DONATION TO HELP END THIS FREEPATHON. THANK YOU!...this is a general all purpose message, and should not be seen as targeting any individual I am responding to...

13
posted on 07/31/2013 4:56:33 PM PDT
by DoughtyOne
(Kill the bill... Begin enforcing our current laws, signed by President Ronald Reagan.)

“Why dont they make it a 20 hour work week and then there will be jobs aplenty.”

I suspect there at least two issues. As a boss you don’t know until your employee turns in his timecard that it’s the second week when he worked 30-plus hours. Now, you must pay for insurance. And, there will be plenty of people who do just that.

Secondly, at federal and state level there has been talk of punishing companies who cut part time hours to get around paying for insurance. Even just discussing such a plan would be enough to make risk-averse employers simply fire every part time employee. That eliminates the issue even before it becomes an issue. (What, employers think, if they make this law backdated to a date when we did this? Okay, we’ll simply fire everybody now and not worry about it.)

“It is not even close to illegal to manage your workforce in a way to reduce costs.”

It is if they make it illegal. Whether that’s constitutional or not remains to be seen. And, a court deciding on that is a 50/50 cr*p shoot. But employers do not want to go to court. So, they will act to prevent even the possibility of a court fight. That’s why they’re firing people now, rather than waiting until the law is in effect.

I’d say it should be illegal to make somebody buy something. Why not force us all to buy a Volt? But, the Supremes disagree with me on that. (See what I mean about a cr*p shoot?)

I'm beginning to think that this is an intentional conversion of the economy to a 30-hour work week, ala France. With office and factory automation eliminating workers, and with the bulk of the workforce too ignorant to do anything else, this is how liberals respond, spreading "job equality." In a sense, "stimulating the economy" with interest rates at virtually zero has made it easier to replace labor with capital.

If the economy was good, if labor was scarce because of higher-paying manufacturing jobs employing hard-working, educated workers sucking it all up, this would NOT be a problem - it would take care of itself, like it did in a good part of the last century. Unfortunately, if some kind of a miracle took place overnight, I would not see that again in my lifetime.

46
posted on 07/31/2013 8:25:52 PM PDT
by The Antiyuppie
("When small men cast long shadows, then it is very late in the day.")

The problem is that if you have more than 50 full time equivalent workers, you get fined. This will come to light once the law kicks into effect in 2015. Once it does happen, many people will be fired.

The benefits will be required if
1. you have ANY full time workers And/Or,
2. you have more than 50 FTE workers.

I remember when the government put corporate average fuel standards (CAFE) in place in the late 1980's for passenger vehicles. Excluded from the strict standards set were light trucks. The unintended consequence at that time? Station wagons (considered passenger cars) were discontinued in favor of "sport utility vehicles" (SUVs) which were built on light truck frames. The result? Less overall gas mileage from the general public.

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